Who has 'Just the right balance of engaging, intellect and wry amusement'? Find out in Anna Pascoe's week

By PRSD, on Tuesday, January 26, 2010

South West Devon Lib Dem Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Anna Pascoe has had a week of running around – at work, on the netball court and not least as a Lib Dem PPC. And it ended with an inspiring candidates’ training day in Exeter, with the Lib Dem talisman on good form. Take it away Anna…

Monday, January 18
After my marathon campaign admin session on Sunday I did begin the week at little bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, but it was straight back in to a new full week at work training up the new starters. The day flew by and before I knew it I was in the gym putting myself through my paces. Another evening of working on emails and casework awaited afterwards, albeit getting to bed a bit earlier than yesterday!

Tuesday, January 19
A bright day dawned on Tuesday and I managed to catch up on emails and make it to work half an hour early! Just before leaving work though, I had a text to say that there wouldn’t be a netball training session tonight and so I got to spend the evening doing much of the same. It’s surprising just how many different groups and residents get in touch with parliamentary candidates (often for things that their local council should have been doing properly to start with).

Wednesday, January 20
After an exciting day of training the new uns on the finer points of hotel software programs at work today (they were enthralled, I promise you), I returned home to approve the final draft of the first leaflet for the Ivybridge by-election. Although of course they do cost money, one of the nicer things about by-elections is the chance to focus on helping someone else get elected instead of fretting about your own campaign for a while. The Lib Dem run of luck extended to our candidate, Tony Barber, unfortunately breaking his arm pretty much on the day he was selected. Undeterred, Tony has been valiantly replying to emails and calls one-handed. We haven’t quite figured out a one-handed leafleting method yet, but the door-knocking is down pat.

Thursday, January 21
Back-to-back busy agenda today, from campaign admin first thing, to full day at work, followed by a council meeting, followed by a netball match. Probably the enduring thing which I learned from this heady mixture is: Should your netball team be leading handsomely at half-time, it is not a good idea for all your players to swap places and have a go at positions they don’t normally play. It was kind of like a hokey-cokey effect, with everyone either running headlong towards each other or being too far apart (hang on, there’s a political analogy in there somewhere…). Particularly foolish was my naive willingness to have a go at Centre, a position which I’ve never tried in all my 28 years and involves a LOT of running. Needless to say by the final quarter we had all got that foolish experimentation out of our systems and returned to our normal spots!

Friday, January 22
Got the news from the printers today that the Ivybridge leaflet was all printed, cut and bound ready to plop through the letterboxes of the Filham ward. Arranged a pick up time and finalised the delivery schedule with the rest of the team. After work tonight I was due to read a poem at a Burns Night supper and a combination of a shortage of time and an idea that it might be creative to wait til the day itself and pick out what to read out then, meant that as I scanned over my eventual choice (In the Springtime) between courses, I realised that it was a) a song and not a poem; b) about three times longer than I thought and c) supposed to have a chorus repeated after every verse, thus d) making it about six times longer than I thought. All this taken to account, the reading went off without too much trouble!

Saturday, January 23
A super-early start today (soon I’ll be getting up before I’ve actually gone to bed!) and it was off to Lostwithiel to fetch the big box of leaflets for the Ivybridge by-election. Then it was on to Exeter for a candidates’ training day, where I got to meet and have a chat with Paddy Ashdown for the first time. For those of you who haven’t heard Paddy speak in person, it’s a real treat – just the right balance of engaging, intellect and wry amusement. My favourite quotes of the day were: “The South West can’t afford another Tory government, we’re still paying for the last one,” and “David Cameron doesn’t want to change the system, he wants to inherit the system.” Good stuff.

Now no young Lib Dem can stand the thought of leaflets sitting undelivered and so I swung off the A38 on the way back from Exeter and got out the first few hundred myself, and dropped off the rest to be delivered in Monday’s group session.

Sunday, January 24
A full day of campaign work today on the Ivybridge by-election and with just over three weeks to go, there’s a good buzz around the campaign already I reckon. The incinerator is, of course, still a big issue and now that Viridor’s application has finally been submitted, this is our chance to keep that energy going and make sure we all send in written representations to Devon County Council on the application’s weakest points, unsuitability and unworkability. And so another week drew to a close and I’m thinking that Polling Day is going to come around before we know it… (even though, courtesy of Bob Ainsworth today, we know that that is May 6).

• Read more of Anna Pascoe’s posts